Ugh, hit "Send" too soon.
I found some packages which embed copies of the Porter stemmer library (PostgreSQL, tracker, pl, etc.). Should I file bugs once I have the full list, or should I apply for a bundling exception?
I don't know if the existing copies are patched in significant ways.
Florian Weimer fweimer@redhat.com writes:
I found some packages which embed copies of the Porter stemmer library (PostgreSQL, tracker, pl, etc.). Should I file bugs once I have the full list, or should I apply for a bundling exception?
Well, as far as postgresql goes, you'll get zero interest from upstream in unbundling, because the Porter code isn't widely available as a prepackaged library. (AFAIK anyway --- has that situation changed in the last few years?)
regards, tom lane
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 10:05:12AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
Florian Weimer fweimer@redhat.com writes:
I found some packages which embed copies of the Porter stemmer library (PostgreSQL, tracker, pl, etc.). Should I file bugs once I have the full list, or should I apply for a bundling exception?
Is this an actual library or just a C file distributed from a web page?
Filing bugs is probably needed as the packages will require modification even if the FPC grants an exception. However, it may be good to work out some of the details beforehand. If an exception were granted, we'd just need to add virtual provides to the packages. This is a lot easier than modifying build scripts to build against the unbundled library. Note that the FPC will need many details in order to decide whether to grant an exception or not. So they *may* need to have information about each case of bundling in each package anyway. (Then again, there may be information that applies to all of them... I need to write up a draft of our code snippet exception criteria which this might (or might not) fall under if it's just distributed as a source file on a website.)
Well, as far as postgresql goes, you'll get zero interest from upstream in unbundling, because the Porter code isn't widely available as a prepackaged library. (AFAIK anyway --- has that situation changed in the last few years?)
The hard question is really whether the code is modified. For distributions, another dependent library is simply one more package to ship.
What usually happens in a simple case of bundling is:
1) We identify it. 2) We package the bundled library separately 3) We add a flag to the build scripts of the bundling packages to use a system library instead of the bundled library (and the cascade of places in the build scripts that that has to change). 4) We submit that upstream and upstream accepts it. 5) Other distributions realize that they can now build with a system version of this library and they start packaging the system library to accomodate that (this latter point works in the other direction as well... we sometimes get the work done by other distributions in this same manner).
There are many non-simple cases (usually revolving around the bundled library being modified) and a few cases where upstream doesn't want our work or the package maintainer in Fedora doesn't want to perform the work but those are happily, few.
-Toshio
On 2013-04-17, Florian Weimer fweimer@redhat.com wrote:
Ugh, hit "Send" too soon.
I found some packages which embed copies of the Porter stemmer library (PostgreSQL, tracker, pl, etc.). Should I file bugs once I have the full list, or should I apply for a bundling exception?
I don't know if the existing copies are patched in significant ways.
The SWI Prologue (pl package) modifies the code and modifes the old Relase 1 (current Porter's release is 2 http://tartarus.org/martin/PorterStemmer/c.txt). I worry unbundling will not be easy because upstream does not provide a library but a simple C code (no headers, no interface) and because pl changes some prototypes to fit better to the pl and of course adds the binding helpers. Unified diff has 980 lines of 383 upstream lines now.
-- Petr
On Apr 18, 2013 7:33 AM, "Petr Pisar" ppisar@redhat.com wrote:
On 2013-04-17, Florian Weimer fweimer@redhat.com wrote:
Ugh, hit "Send" too soon.
I found some packages which embed copies of the Porter stemmer library (PostgreSQL, tracker, pl, etc.). Should I file bugs once I have the full list, or should I apply for a bundling exception?
I don't know if the existing copies are patched in significant ways.
The SWI Prologue (pl package) modifies the code and modifes the old Relase 1 (current Porter's release is 2 http://tartarus.org/martin/PorterStemmer/c.txt). I worry unbundling will not be easy because upstream does not provide a library but a simple C code (no headers, no interface) and because pl changes some prototypes to fit better to the pl and of course adds the binding helpers. Unified diff has 980 lines of 383 upstream lines now.
Yeah, if upstream isn't shipping this as a proper library i'd try to get this in as either a copylib (guidelines for that already exist) or as a code snippet (guidelines for that don't yet exist but the fpc has recently granted several exceptions based on the concept.)
It still needs to go through fpc to grant the exception for two reasons: 1) confirm that it is in fact a copylib or code snippet 2) to assign it a virtual provide so packages that bundle it can be notified in case a severe bug is discovered in the porter stemmer upstream on which these are based.
-Toshio
-- Petr
-- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
On 04/18/2013 04:32 PM, Petr Pisar wrote:
On 2013-04-17, Florian Weimer fweimer@redhat.com wrote:
Ugh, hit "Send" too soon.
I found some packages which embed copies of the Porter stemmer library (PostgreSQL, tracker, pl, etc.). Should I file bugs once I have the full list, or should I apply for a bundling exception?
I don't know if the existing copies are patched in significant ways.
The SWI Prologue (pl package) modifies the code and modifes the old Relase 1 (current Porter's release is 2 http://tartarus.org/martin/PorterStemmer/c.txt).
I think you're packaging the newer Snowball-generated stemmers. Those are available from http://snowball.tartarus.org/, and there are actual release tarballs (albeit unversioned ones). As you can see, upstream has added support for additional languages which you still have to pick up. This upstream development activity seems to be a fairly strong argument against bundling.
On 04/17/2013 02:48 PM, Florian Weimer wrote:
I found some packages which embed copies of the Porter stemmer library (PostgreSQL, tracker, pl, etc.). Should I file bugs once I have the full list, or should I apply for a bundling exception?
FYI, I'm deferring dealing with this until I've got better tool support for finding and comparing the clones.
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Florian Weimer -
Petr Pisar -
Tom Lane -
Toshio Kuratomi